A CEO from India is facing backlash after claiming that his company had replaced 90% of its human support staff with an AI-powered chatbot, despite concerns from tech experts and the general public about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs.
Suumit Shah, the founder of Dukaan, tweeted that the chatbot has significantly decreased the time between the first response and resolution for customer inquiries. The tweet sparked outrage online.
The announcement comes at a time when worries about workers being replaced by AI, especially in the services sector, have been widely discussed and voiced.
Shah spoke about his business decision to employ a chatbot in a string of tweets that have amassed over a million views. He admitted that firing workers had been “tough,” but he insisted that it had been “necessary,” according to the BBC.
“Given the state of the economy, start-ups are prioritizing ‘profitability’ over striving to become ‘unicorns’, and so are we,” he wrote. Shah added that customer support had been a struggle for the firm for a long time and that he was looking to fix it.
Shah also shared the process of how they built the bot and the AI platform in a short span of time so that all of Dukaan’s customers could have their own AI assistant. He said that the bot was answering all kinds of queries with speed and accuracy.
“In the age of instant gratification, launching a business is not a distant dream anymore,” he wrote. “With the right idea, the right team, anyone can turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality.”
Shah also mentioned that there were numerous positions open at the company. However, a lot of users criticized his tweets and claimed that he made this “heartless” choice at the expense of his staff’s lives.
“As expected, didn’t find any mention of the 90% staff that were laid off. What assistance were they provided?” asked one user.
“Maybe it was the right decision for the business, but it shouldn’t have turned into a celebratory/marketing thread about it,” another said.
As expected, someone will be offended on someone else’s behalf, Shah replied to one tweet, adding that he would post about help for his staff on LinkedIn because, on Twitter, people are looking for “profitability and not sympathy.”
In the past few years, the accessibility and use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT have skyrocketed. Businesses have reportedly used these tools to increase output while lowering costs. Nowadays, employees fear that technology will take their jobs from them.
According to a Goldman Sachs report published in March, 300 million full-time jobs could be replaced by AI. There are concerns about job losses as a result of the numerous Indian companies investing in AI to develop products.
